Ralph Waldo Emerson

Consider what you have in the smallest well-chosen library-a company of the wisest and wittiest men which can be plucked out of all civilized countries in a thousand years. The men themselves were then hidden and inaccessible. They were solitary, impatient of interruption, and fenced by etiquette. But now they are immortal, and the thought they did not reveal, even to their bosom friends, is here written out in transparent words of light to us, who are strangers of another age.

Never read any book that is not a year old.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

Books are for nothing but to inspire.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.

They conquer who believe they can.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius.

There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.